March 14, 2015

March 14, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Today’s writing is the third part of this writer comments on “Separate Disciplines: The Study of Behavior and the Study of the Psyche” (1986) by Fraley and Vargas. It is amazing that they as well as many others would accurately write “Instead of, as often said, behaviorizing the culture, the culture will cognitivize us.” They even refer to what is being said, but rather than looking for the independent variables of their communication response, they keep trying to argue back. Since this “behaviorizing” had to involve “technical terms even for everyday stuff” which to many “sound so odd and sterile, even inhuman”, it should come as a surprise that not much energy has gone into how behaviorism is actually talked about. 

Anyone who had a one-time exposure to SVB is capable of understanding and acknowledging that the more emphasis a person puts on what he or she is saying, the more horrible he or she sounds. Naturally, non-behaviorists are aversively affected by the behaviorist's tenacious “philosophically uncompromising approach of human affairs.” Not much has changed because, like everyone else, behaviorists are completely tone-deaf. NVB is everywhere and we don't even acknowledge that it is a problem to us.

Fraley and Vargas (1986) write “It is a matter of controls over our verbal behavior and of the kind of verbal community we arrange to provide those controls.” They refer to securing their written verbal behavior, but their vocal verbal behavior is only indirectly mentioned. While “assuming that debate sharpens the wits” they continue to “listen respectfully” to people who “tell us how wrong we are.” This is an example of how NVB obliterates SVB and continues to do so unless we pay attention to what is happening. 

Behaviorology’s separation from psychology, like a married arguing couple,  seems necessary, because the two can’t communicate with each other. However, both parties are equally impaired by NVB, and neither one of them is aware of this. The lack of SVB makes it seem as if a separation would solve the problem, but it couldn’t and it didn’t. 

      

Behaviorologists as well as people in mainstream psychology are mostly engaged in NVB and thus they all “talk funny” while they are trying to “do the right things.” Actually, it is more accurate to say that they all talk in an unnatural way. Insistence on the importance of the scientist’s verbal behavior hasn’t contributed as far as improving human relationship. 

SVB and NVB have been present since human beings became verbal, but we have yet to take notice of this fact. Such is the power of our culture, it doesn’t matter which culture. The authors state “That shared culture, called radical behaviorism, denotes, with respect to our verbal behavior, the controls that determine how we will react to a given body of facts, and even what will be admitted as facts.” It is astounding that behaviorists and behaviorologists haven't gotten to the SVB/NVB distinction yet.

The paper by Fraley and Vargas (1986) was to establish an academic home. Perhaps this academic home today is still lacking, because behaviorology hasn’t found its own sound? It took a long time for behaviorologists to be comfortable enough with themselves to be able to establish their own separate science, which “profoundly differs from any other discipline.” At stake is not only behaviorology’s identity and independence, but the identity and independence of every human being. SVB is needed to talk about that in a way that we all come together like my students in my class. 

The paper ends beautifully with the sentence “Independence is simply the name for the sorts of controls we prefer and under which we would prosper.” This ties in with SVB, because we only prosper with SVB. Nobody prospers in NVB. What has been going on in the name of prosperity was, as one student put it, simply “abuse.” SVB involves mutually reinforcing interactions. As long as NVB abuse, masquerading as human interaction, is not properly addressed we will fall victim to it without even knowing it. Moreover, behaviorology cannot exist, let alone flourish, in an aversive contingency. It is not about the sort of controls behaviorologists prefer, but about what makes human interaction possible. 

Only SVB can give behaviorology or behaviorism its right tone, its own sound. Communication problems between behaviologists and practitioners from the field of psychology can and will be solved and behaviorology will be fully acknowledged. SVB advances scientific exploration exponentially.